A father and son who had never met were united after the boy’s mother used a government hotline to inquire about the dad, who she had met more than 50 years earlier and not seen since.
The Greater Kaohsiung resident decided that her son should meet his biological father and she wanted to meet the man again to reminisce about their romantic encounter.
The meeting, made possible with the help of the Greater Kaohsiung Government’s 1999 help hotline, was only recently revealed when Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) posted the story on Facebook.
It began when the woman, a 70-year-old grandmother, using the pseudonym Ahaushen (阿好嬸), called the hotline to seek assistance in her search.
She told staff members that when she was in her 20s, she met a man surnamed Chiu (邱), who was born to Taiwanese and Japanese parents.
She fell in love with him and, after a romantic encounter, she became pregnant.
“Due to the differences in our cultural backgrounds and other reasons, we could not get married. Regrettably, we were separated by fate soon after that,” Ahaushen said.
Ahaushen said she gave birth to a boy and decided to raise him by herself. Now, as an elderly matriarch of a family with many grandchildren, she said her dream was for her son to meet his real father.
The task was taken up by Wang Kuo-hsiao (王國孝), a police officer from the Sinsing District (新興) precinct in Greater Kaohsiung.
With the name given by the family as a clue, Wang went through many files and eventually found Chiu, who was living in Taoyuan County.
After Chiu’s family had been given an explanation regarding the search, they agreed that he would respond to Ahaushen’s enquiries. Chiu visited Greater Kaohsiung and finally got to meet his son.
Ahaushen said she had not harbored much hope of finding Chiu after more than half a century.
“The 1999 hotline helped to fulfill my dream,” she said with tears at the emotion of seeing Chiu again after so many years.
“My son is now more than 40 years of age. I really wanted to let him meet his father,” she added.
Chen said on Facebook that she was delighted with the outcome and thanked the city’s 1999 hotline staff for accomplishing the mission.
According to Wang, he went through the files of more than 20 people with the man’s name before he found the right one in September.
Because the two have families and did not want to create a disturbance by bringing up romantic encounters from their younger days, the two repeatedly requested police and hotline staff to keep their identities a secret, Wang said.
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